Reader Appreciation Day

I wanted to take a moment to thank everybody visitng this blog so far for checking it out. It's not the most ambitious project on the web as of yet, but I love writing, and it feels great to be doing it again. Even moreso, it's gratifying to have people that care enough - that are interested enough - to read this blog. So once again, please know how much it's appreciated.

I do feel that The Easy Outsider has its wheels off the ground - that I have a good idea of what the blog is and what I want it to be. I'm aiming to write more frequently, and to cover subjects that extend beyond accounts of my day - such as commentary on sports, culture, technology, social media (and maybe politics?) here. While the first weeks we're very much about wandering and discovering, and I tried to avoid making rash assessments, I now feel familiar enough with the landscape to make some critical assessments. So that is a goal moving forward, but there will still be plenty about what I'm eating and where I'm swimming,

Also, I am going to attempt to begin responding to some of the comments. Despite the casual tone, I'm trying to view this project as seriously as possible, like I'm auditioning for a lifestyle blog on Yahoo! Sports or The Washington Post or whatever. Thinking about it in those terms keeps me focused in the direction I always intended for my writing. So even though it's fairly common for bloggers to carry on one-to-one conversations with readers in comment sections, I find too much of it can be a bit discrediting. That has been my thinking, but I don't want it seem like I'm ignoring the interest and support, so I'm going to try to respond to most comments moving forward.

However, please feel free to email me direct questions and feedback at shift78@gmail.com. Not being facetious at all when I say I would love to get more emails.

Furthermore, I also have abridged inane observations for you consumption on Twitter. If you want to follow me, I'm @steelydwill.

Now I need to make up for lost time on the comments people have already left, so here goes...

Brett - Latest update has me making my summer visit for two weeks around The Fourth of July, so looks highly unlikely that I'll be back for Labor Day.

Will - Coincidentally enough, Abu Dhabi Week just ran a fishing article. The article is written in the Will Leitch second person, which I find incredibly annoying, but there are some details about area fishing at the bottom.

Uncle Steve - Now notable progress toward becoming the UAE's next great soccer ref.

Aunt Nancy - The price of eating out is a mixed bag, but it's not necesarilly as ultra-expensive as we thought six months ago. It's easy to spend $60 a meal at one of the hotel restaurants - even more depending on the alcohol - and the quality is just as hit-and-miss as the $10 meals, in my opinion.

Barret - You are an excellent soccer player and I would personally vouch for you to replace one of the Brazilians for my nearby club, Al Wahda. However, your comments are scaring my family.

THE Oppressive Heat Arrives

The outdoor temperatures we just started reaching in Abu Dhabi exceed all of my previous experiences, surpassing youth baseball games in the low 100s at the Edrico Tournament every July. High of 107 degrees yesterday (42 Celsius), same number expected to register today. We knew this time was coming, as I doubt anyone moves to UAE without hearing sober tales about THE Oppressive Heat, and now here we are.

That seems to be the unconsciously agreed-upon phrase to describe the hot season around here - THE Oppressive Heat - as I've seen various strangers and bloggers use it. It should be the mascot of the Abu Dhabi professional indoor lacrosse team. Ex-pats will warn you that THE Oppressive Heat emerges as the central antagonist in UAE life sometime toward the beginning of May(not unlike The Ohio State University during September), and after five-plus weeks of highs in the 90s (which is fine by me), we leaped past the point of no return. For the next 5 months, all outdoor activity likely will have to be planned around it.

Now I have asserted many times over the years that I am a hot weather person, but that's as we define hot weather in the U.S. East. Birmingham, Alabama was certainly my favorite climate I have ever lived in, as I gladly exchanged regularly hitting 100 in the summers for winter days that rarely dipped below freezing. Miami's climate has always sounded great to me, and I don't have any more interest in seeing snow unless I'm skiing.

So secretly, I have been hoping that I won't find the UAE heat as oppressive as every single other person I talked with. 107 degrees felt survivable...like, you could still plan outdoor activities, as long as there's shade and a cool body of water around. In yesterday's example, we went to lunch by the pool at the Abu Dhabi Shangri La, and although you could feel the heat in waves like an oven door opened into an air-conditioned kitchen, spending a half hour in the artificially-cooled pool and then eating in the shade made it comfortable.

But the heat test has only just begun, as we don't plan to see another day with a high below 100 until October, and as we move deeper into the summer, we expect to hit numbers like 115, 120 or 130. Plus, unlike Vegas (where I remember feeling pretty comfortable outdoors the year I watched my friend Jeff play in the World Series of Poker in July), it is NOT a dry heat, they say. It is going to be plenty humid. All evidence suggests that time spent outside this summer will be time spent miserable, for me like everyone else.

Last weekend when we were hanging out at The Hilton and the weather was still pleasantly in the 90s, we set up shop in lounge chairs beside a middle-aged couple from Texas. Since you seem to run into a fairly limited number of Americans in Abu Dhabi (far more Europeans), they were excited to hear our American accent and immediately initiated a conversation.

We found out the guy is from Texas and keeps a summer home in Florida, so hoping for a little reassurance from the like-minded, I told him that I consider myself a hot weather person, and that I'm holding onto hope that everybody is exaggerating about how miserable the heat is, until it proves me wrong.

He chortled and with a still-distinguishable Texas accent said: "Brotha, I wish that was the case."

In related news, the average daily temperatures still look to be well over 100 in early September, and Labor Day is looking awful good as a time for my first trip back to the States. Heck, maybe I shouldn't wait that long.

Straight Flowing On A Boat

We're racking up an amazing number of luxury leisure experiences in The Middle East. I didn't write up much on my two trips to Emirates Palace or brunch by the beach at The Fairmont or brunch by the 31st-floor pool at the hotel that adjoins our building. Such times are pretty damn great. Feel free to cast me a braggart, but I promise I'm appreciating every damn moment of it. If I write a book about my time here, it might come off like the exact opposite of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, with a main character that is boyishly excited about every club and restaurant.

Yesterday was our second outing on a rented boat. The first time about a month ago, it was Leslie's entire company (up to that point) plus friends and family and boat crew. I'm no expert on boat sizes, but I'd guess it was a double-decker 50-footer, with about 30 people on board? This time, there were just five of us plus our Sri Lankan captain on a 30-footer.

Pretty outstanding day in the water and sun, as we spent about four hours out on The Corniche, the main seaside area along the Persian Gulf tributaries. The highlight of the day was a 15-minute period where a school of dolphins enveloped our boat. Leslie, of course, jumped in, hoping one would invite her to ride it. They were curious, but not quite that interested in making friends, so the closest anyone got to dolphin contact was from the boat about eight feet away. Unfortunately, they were fast and predictable, while my camera's shutter speed was predictably slow. Still, pretty amazing, and not something we had counted on at all.

Other than that, it was just a lot of swimming around and hoping that the water was fairly clean, drinking beers (which we had to hide like 16 year olds from the police boats) and frying like a hash brown in the 99 degree heat. I think we've gotten to the point of the year when no SPF can stand up against the Abu Dhabi sun for a prolonged period, and it's about to get a lot hotter.

Still, it was definitely one of those "it's good ta be da king" days, and we're generally not lacking for those in AD.

The Day We Got bin Laden, It Was Not Cute To Feel Like An Outsider

Well, one of the reasons I was excited to move to UAE is to see a different world perspective, and the bin Laden death certainly affected me differently here.

I'm proud of what I consider an important accomplishment for our national defense, and I'm highly interested in the details of the mission. But in an unfamiliar position of perceived vulnerability, I was mostly thinking of myself for the first 24 hours.

Still unwilling to let go of my American sports fixation, I woke up at 4 a.m. Monday GCT - in time to watch the last two periods of the Capitals game. After they disgustingly handed Tampa Bay a 3-2 OT win and 2-0 series lead on a shit line change 2.5 hours later, I angrily and abruptly went back to bed. Hadn't heard peep about Osama during the game, and I had been dividing my attention with Twitter, Facebook and Penn State football message boards. Must have just missed the early breaks on those platforms.

When I woke up again around 10 a.m. and checked Twitter, it was everywhere.

My first reaction was: "Wow, we finally got him. Justice wins out."

Within the first half hour, I had shifted to: "I'm in the Middle East now, I wonder if this will affect anything?"

And then finally, after receiving a fairly cautionary email from Leslie (who had left for work before I woke up) and reading the U.S. Warden Message (Hollywood has led me to become uneasy about any situations involving wardens), I was pretty freaked out.

Don't go outside any more than you need to. Don't visit crowded places. Don't take cabs. There could be some serious bin Laden supporters around. Anti-westerner sentiment that might have been below the surface may be ready to manifest itself in the form of a public incident. Someone like me could get victimized. This was the message I was internalizing.

Thus I spent most of the day feeling surprised, uncertain, alone and vulnerable, and for the first time since my early days, I would have loved to teleport home. I purposefully didn't leave the apartment at all yesterday until about 8 p.m. when Leslie and I grabbed carryout Italian from the mall. She went to work where business went on, which made me feel like a wuss, but she did have an office full of Americans sharing the experience.

It was was undoubtedly an overemotional overreaction on my part, but it felt like a potential game-changer on life here. The comfort that I had built over the last month seemed lost. That's not to say I was thinking "I wish we hadn't taken out Osama so I could still take carefree walks to Texas Chicken." I just had no concept of my own safety.

In the light of the second day, I'm no longer feeling or behaving like a 10 year old spending a night in a house alone. The good ol' Al Wahda mall next door has welcomed me in and taken my dirhams in exchange for Starbucks and Chinese food the same as any previous day.

Realistically, it's unlikely that UAE structures are going to be retaliation targets, or that westerners in this country are going to be attacked, but it's possible. I still can't say what the chances are. But you try to take a step back and assess the situation realistically and proceed with life.

Most of my family has been to Jerusalem. Many of my friends and I have been to baseball games at Tiger Stadium. It's a new type of safety concern for me, but that doesn't mean it's a grave one. Have some fortitude and adapt, Dan.

Other than that, I've been watching the news and reading the papers to try to get a sense of the Arab perspective. The image above is of today's The National, the English newspaper in Abu Dhabi that paid me to write two local soccer stories week. The themes of the opinion pieces seem to be 1) Osama was evil 2) he hasn't had much impact on Al Queda operations for a while 3) by orchestrating 9-11, Bin Ladin provoked the U.S. into bringing a fight to the Middle East and causing a lot of collateral damage.

I would like exposure to more of a "man on the street" perspective from the people of UAE, but the newspapers and English-speaking channels I've watched (CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera) haven't taken that angle yet. And I certainly can't figure anything out by studying faces at the mall.

I will say that I found some of the celebrations that they aired in the U.S. to be over the top. This perspective in Salon nearly mirrors my own view, but basically, I think there's a fine line between appreciating the serving of justice and celebrating the taste of blood. Without sympathizing for the incredibly evil, there's still a humanitarian-minded high road available for the taking here, and it doesn't involve crowd surfing.

Wild Wadi All I Ever Wanted

Yesterday was my one-month monthiversary in the UAE, and the celebration destination was Wild Wadi, a water park in Dubai. I consider myself a lifelong fan of water slides - preferring them by far over dry amusement park rides - but in truth I haven't been to one since I could legally drive.

After yesterday's trip, it will not be another decade before I return. In fact, if I ever get any visitors from the US, a day at Wild Wadi is almost guaranteed. Not only are water slides still great, they've gotten even better since my youth. Going in, Leslie, Sandra (her visiting friend) and I were half-expecting a fun-because-it's-pathetic experience. We thought we'd be laughing at Wild Wadi, not with it. Nope, it was pure fun.

Highlights included the 20-minute water slide where you guy up hill as well as down and the fish pedi pond, where you stick legs in a bowl and swarms of little one-inch garra rufa fish eat the dead skin off your feet. I was official photographer for that experience, but it looked like quite a unique sensation. Leslie and Sandra stuck it out for like 20 minutes, so I guess they came around after initially being freaked out. One lady customer had a far higher tally of fish gnawing on her feet than everyone else, to the point where you couldn't see them anymore - only little fish. I guess she had the sorriest foot care. Also, I'm glad I didn't get to see where I ranked.

But the true highlight of the day for me - and one of my favorite moments so far since moving here - came on the day's first slide, which was called Tantrum Alley. There's a good chance whoever named it didn't know exactly what "tantrum" means and probably wanted something more along the lines of American-style-hyperbole monikers like "cyclone" or "screamer." There was no crying, but there was substantial screaming in a variety of languages.

It's going to be difficult for me to describe this to differentiate from other water slide rides, but it involves 2-4 people on a large clover-shaped inner tube descending down about four stomach-dropping slopes that, at the bottom of each one, send you high up the sides like a half-pipe. Here's a video of randoms going down it, but I strongly believe their ride was lot more tame than mine.

Profoundly impacting the experience, I didn't get to ride this one with the girls, due to the need to stick the cameras in a locker (thus, no personal pictures) and the level at which "holding spots" is apparently frowned upon in The Middle East. So instead, I rode with three Arab high-school age boys, two of whom had eaten too much Texas Chicken or Hardees.

This situation developed very quickly - at the top of the line I had no idea that I couldn't ride solo. Within 15 seconds, I went from thinking I was going alone, to being herded into a spot next to the teenagers (all our feet touching each others', a little weird), to speeding down the first drop. Between myself and the two girthy kids, we made the ride extra exciting and dangerous. Each time we went down a slope and then up the side, it would look like either the jovial, long-haired chubby one was going to fall on me, or vice versa. I have to think that ride has caused some injuries in its day, and I especially imagine they shouldn't be allowing as much weight as we had on one tube.

In any case, it was damn fun, despite the small miracle we didn't have any casualties. Our tube definitely was airborne and threatening to capsize a few times - with the lads all yelling in Arabic while I screamed "Holy Shit!" and tried to remember what I had heard about tort law in UAE. Too bad there aren't any physical pictures, but I think some of the mental images from that ride are in my head for a good while.

I like to think my happy little Arab buddies feel the same way, and that somewhere on the internet they're writing to friends about their crazy water adventure with a giant white dude.

Eight Hours East: Pop Commentary - 4.29.11

I plan to take advantage of this pulpit periodically to get my pop culture opinions in front of an audience. A series of unrelated commentaries that have taken place in my head since arriving in Abu Dhabi:

2011 Music - TV On The Radio's Nine Types Of Light currently sits as my favorite album so far in 2011. From the first time I heard Wolf Like Me, I have consistently found most of their song compositions to be interesting, Rain Machine's voice to be compelling and their baselines to be air guitar-y. The newest release is another winner.

The No. 2 slot currently goes to The Strokes' Angles, but there are tons of albums I'm interested in coming out in the next several months.

Here are my Top 5 songs of 2011 so far:
1) Machu Picchu - The Strokes
2) Baltimore - Tennis
3) You - TV On The Radio
4) Still Sound - Toro y Moi
5) Royal Blue - Cold War Kids

NHL TV Deal With NBC/Versus - Certainly the NHL occupies a much better spot in the collective conscious of the sports-loving population than it did a few year ago (after the 2005 lockout). The rule changes helped make the game more exciting, especially getting rid of the two-line pass, and the league has more stars now. Now, the type of person who watches some sports is much more likely to be tuning into the NHL playoffs now than in 2007.

I'm sure this positive trend is a major reason why the NHL chose to re-up with NBC/Versus. ESPN made what was reported very close to a matching bid. It wouldn't shock me if there was more to the details than just the NHL picking NBC over ESPN's equal bid, but the NHL is framing it as their choice to continue with a partner they like.

I generally enjoy the Versus/NBC coverage - for me it's nowhere near as distractingly awful as most sports-broadcasting efforts. But I really feel like the exposure ESPN would provide, as compared to any other channels, is just too big to pass up. The NHL currently has two stars that have broken into the sports consciousness - Ovi and Crosby. A ton more should be there.

My uncle Steve is probably a 75-percentile fan in terms of the amount of attention he gives to sports in his life. I don't believe he could tell you much about Jonathan Toews or Steven Stamkos, and I think there are many knowledgeable-to-very-knowledgeable fans just like him.

That's what happens when ESPN nearly ignores you these days - that's the level of control they have. I have a very strong dislike for ESPN in the 21st century, because I think they have shat on their original brand (and core sports fans, in the process) in their endless, mind-numbing attempts to reach new audiences and create star personalities. They have no tact anymore. Still, I'd prefer to see daily NHL highlights on Sportscenter and have 21st-century weasel Matthew Berry running through his favored fantasy hockey players.

Without a presence on ESPN, it's damn difficult for hockey to be much of a water cooler topic. I think the NHL really underestimated how much that's worth by re-upping with NBC.

World War Z - On my 12-hour plane ride to move to Abu Dhabi, I read the last 2/3s of Max Brook's World War Z. It's a zombie post-apocalypse book that doesn't break entirely new ground, but I think most people who enjoy AMC's The Walking Dead would find it interesting (although I don't have any clue how the movie they're making it into will work, because it's like 100 short stories). For me, the "suddenly redefining your entire existence" angle felt personally relevant. My situation made me enjoy the book a lot more, and I have a feeling I will probably always remember that I read this book on that flight, just as I vividly recall starting Glamorama while taking off for Vegas for the first time.

Muscat Love and Road-Tripping Lessons Gleaned in Oman

At least where I'm from, the word "touristy" carries negative connotations. If you take a "touristy" trip, you opted for a psychologically comfortable experience, rather than immersing yourself in the local scene and taking on whatever that entails.

Our trip to Oman this past weekend was a great example of the precarious balance between chasing satisfying stimuli in a foreign place and amassing excessive stress in an unfamiliar environment. We saw interesting things, met great people and shared adventures and laughs. But some of the high points took a high level of stress to reach, while my favorite moments were those that felt exotic yet relaxed.

On Thursday night after Leslie got home from work, we took the 45-minute flight from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, the capital of Oman, population just over a million in the metro area. We had just over two days to absorb whatever we could from the country, with an early-morning flight home Sunday.

We stayed the first night in a Muscat Radison and then set off for less populated areas in our rental car Friday morning. The decision was to follow the path of some of Leslie's co-workers who had already visited, centering their trips around a circular route that begins in Muscat, goes approximately 200 kilometers south along the Gulf Of Oman to Sur, Oman, and then loops back north from a road about 20 miles inland. This slice of the country probably encompasses 1/20th of it total.

The co-workers came back with tales of wading in Wadis (dried up or semi-dried up river beds that tend to make interesting scenery/topography), cliff diving and camping - an outdoorsmen's adventure tale. This is what we were attempting to emulate, but the wild times during our Omani roadtrip related mostly to the roads and road stress, rather than leaping into water.

We had some handicaps:

1) We pre-ordered an SUV to rent, because we knew the terrain on this route necessitates it. However upon arrival in Muscat, we found out that all the SUVs are manual transmission, which neither myself nor Leslie can drive. After momentarily considering trying to learn stick on the fly, we settled on just taking a Camry.

2) As you can see from the images, this region of Oman is mountainous, with the hills beautifully rolling right into the sea. Unfortunately, Leslie is bothered by heights, and some of the wadis are back within the mountain range. So to try to get to them, we had to go up and down some slopy, windy roads that reminded me of going from Denver to Winter Park (minus the snow or greenery). Furthermore our Camry had weak breaks.

3) After this trip, I feel motivated to investigate the psychology behind road signs and directions in Oman and to write an essay about my findings. I'm convinced there's something fascinating behind the horrible assistance we received from signs, maps and locals. It's a very warm country - the people were tremendously kind to us. I highly doubt they're trying to dissuade visitors. But almost every instruction or label was blatantly wrong, misleading or vague. It was almost like everyone was unfamiliar with the concept of finding places while driving.

4) Acceptable dress in the Middle East is very different from the U.S., with women wearing garments covering them nearly from head to toe and men at least wearing long pants if not dishdashas. In many places, dressing in tank tops or shorts would be quite offensive to locals, if not downright illegal. But in Abu Dhabi or Dubai or Muscat, western dress has become commonplace by the many visitors and expats. During travel, figuring out when its culturally sensitive to "cover up" is difficult.

So the result of all this was that we spent far more time stressed out on the road and less time enjoying the sites in between our Muscat lodging stops. The main roads of the loop were no trouble, but once we exited them to find something, it usually involved tons of turning around, never actually getting there, going over rock-and-sand terrain that made us worry about getting stuck or a flat, etc.

On Friday, we left Muscat around 11:30 am, and we finally arrived in Sur around 6, only succeeding in finding one stop on our list during that time. That was the very pleasant Wadi Ash Shab, opening up to the sea on one side and winding up into the mountains on the other. Here we took a short wooden boat ride, and Leslie spoke Arabic to our congenial guides, who were surprised and tickled. It was nice, but the stress of being lost and the car-sick feeling that comes from constantly making u-turns hampered my ability to enjoy it.

We spent Friday night at a seaside motel in Sur cut form a similar mold as cheap-but-serviceable Atlantic coast beach motels from decades ago. The rooms were sufficient and overlooking the water, so it was a tranquil ending to a turbulent day.

On Saturday, we didn't allow ourselves to get into as many stressful situations, but things didn't start off smoothly, either.

The first development came a few miles south of Sur (the very bottom of our loop before we started heading west and north), when we tried to stop in a small-village quasi-strip mall to restock supplies like water (we went through tons of it, despite spending most of our time in a cool car) and gas.

This was the first place we visited where the locals' looks turned disdainful, because our westerner warm-weather clothes were revealing way too much skin. When Leslie bought water in a tank top at a small-town grocery mart, the clerk actually threw the changes back to her, an exaggerated display of his desire not to make contact. Of course with Leslie's familiarity with the Middle East, she has "covered up" many times in the past, and we both would have done so if we knew we were going to offend. Just a few miles before in Sur, there were plenty of people walking along the beach and town in various forms of t-shirts and shorts, and we didn't anticipate this reaction. Assuming that you left a "damn thoughtless Americans" impression on such people is a buzzkill.

The second issue was that we never made our one highlighted destination, Wadi Bani Khalid, because it involved that steep mountain pass. Leslie was driving, as she was the only person on the rental car agreement, but we actually got to a point where the vertigo was too much. We basically did a "Chinese Fire Drill" on an extreme downhill gradient, and then I nine-point-turned us back up the hill and eventually back to the highway to Muscat.

So Friday and Saturday were mostly just a pure-driving road trip. We got to see really interesting topography, from the mountains down to the sea around to the dessert and prairie-like areas and back to the mountains. We took pictures of roaming goats, sheep, donkeys and camels. These would be mental images I should remember vividly telling youngens about Oman 30 years from now (knock on wood).

But I also have a smattering of treasured funny memories from Mr. Kucharek's 11th grade Spanish class. Does that mean it was a good experience, despite all the time I was miserable?

The good news is the trip finished up marvelously, as our final evening in Muscat was delightful. We stayed at a four-story bed and breakfast, one street back from the beach and the sea, with more mountains just a couple of miles behind us. It was picturesque internally and externally. At around 6:30 pm, we sat on the fourth-floor deck and watched the sunset.

Then we went out to a Persian restaurant, Shiraz, and had a delicious outdoor dinner right on the water and overlooking the city. It was located in the Crowne Plaza Hotel...probably not a locals' spot...probably pretty touristy. It was perfect though.

The trip ended on a real high note - the last half day in Muscat was interesting, satisfying and memorable. I definitely would like to get back there while living in the Middle East, and I would still hope to visit more countries and regions that were never on my mind a few months ago.

I'd even like to take some more off-the-beaten-path journeys, but I really want to plan those carefully to minimize stress headaches.